Reds! Official Fanfiction Thread (Part Two)
- Thread starter Miss Teri
- Start date
Hey I love Henry Darger and I loved this update. And I implore you not to extrapolate too much of his life in this fanfiction. I understand you want to depict his love with Schloeder, but Darger could have been trans and he could have been ace. We don't know enough about him and I don't think it's quite right to just project the repressed gay Christian male in the early 20th century standard narrative upon him. I don't think anything about his sexuality or gender was nearly as important as his love for children, his strong convictions against child abuse, and his love of Catholicism, which we know far more about than his relationship with his special friend or his relationship with gender.
I know the very nature of alternate history is writing fan fiction about historical figures, but I please ask you to approach Darger's life with sensitivity and tact. It's the least he deserves after all that's been said about him.
Bookmark1995
Banned
There is a story that my mom told me that gave me my view of communism.
My mom volunteered at a refugee center for Soviet emigres during the 1980s. There was one story by one defector that really stuck out to her: he was an engineer, a highly skilled person. One day he watches an American movie (my mom didn't remember the name) but destroyed his faith in communism was this: in the movie, a character (a nurse) is robbed of her color television, and the women just goes out and buys a new one.
The defector was angered by this because-well, despite being an engineer, he couldn't even buy a television (you know, shortages of everything), and here was someone who was supposed to be on the lower end of the economic scale, being able to afford things he couldn't, because of the Soviet system.
I think why communism failed OTL had a lot to do with the kind of people promoting it: Lenin, Stalin, and all these other brutalized individuals. These were people who grew up in a nation defined by oppression and court politics, and their cultural and political outlook infected their ideology. In turn, many other so-called communists embraced these tactics over the course of the 20th century.
America, despite its flaws, is a nation that genuinely believes in the idea of freedom. In my post about the American mindset, the reason why Americans embraced communism is because their democratic traditions were under siege by growing clique of imperialist-capitalists, culminating in a coup by a general, and because they believe in openness, they avoided the nightmare of late Stalinism.
BP Booker
Banned
I dont know what movie was that, but I can tell you the majority of Americans cant just go out and buy a new color TV right away. And are nurses (trained medical proffesionals) really on the low end of the economic scale?
Actually, the Soviet engineer earned a good salary
In his work "The Bolsheviks come to power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd." Alexander Rabinovich, explaining the attractiveness of the party for the majority of the working class of the city, pointed to its "relatively democratic, tolerant and decentralized structure and methods of leadership, and its essentially open and massive character ... at all levels of the Petrograd organization of the Bolsheviks in 1917, free and lively discussions continued on the fundamental questions of theory and tactics "[81].
There is good material about Breitovsk Soviet Republic (then this is a village - for that time it was normal). It is a pity that the article in Russian. The problem was not in the person of Lenin (initially he opposed the use of military executions in wartime) or Stalin (they generally like to explain everything, but this is all the same as to say that Comrade Dzhugashvili personally built the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Plant). The problem is that we had 80% illiterate peasants, the problem is that the white scoundrels with the imperialists imposed a civil war on the Republic of Soviets, and that we were left alone ...
Bookmark1995
Banned
But he had to wait in line for the most basic goods.
But didn't Lenin cancel the Duma elections becaUse the Bolsheviks didn't get a majority?
I'm not going into their sex life...as far as I can tell, he and Whillie only had a romantic relationship.
I do think Darger was ace and possibly sex-repulsed from his experiences at the Lincoln Asylum. And I do think that he might've been trans or genderqueer. "Imitation little girl" can't just mean "gay man", it's far too on-the-nose.
But I do think that even if he wasn't trans, he had certain idiosyncratic views on gender that influenced his art. Darger scholars (which are fortunately a thing) now speculate that the Vivian Girls's apparent hermaphroditic features were a deliberate choice rather than him being unfamiliar with female anatomy, depicting genderfluidity as a source of strength. It has precedence in books that Darger definitely might have read. In The Marvelous Land of Oz, our hero Tip discovers that he was born a princess and turned into a boy by a wicked sorceress, leading to a quest for Tip to undo the curse and take her place as Princess of Oz. But I think it comes from the Catholic tale of St. Perpetua, who martyred herself by turning into a male gladiator and charging into battle. Perpetua's full name is Vibia Perpetua. Vibia as in Vivian?
So, it'll be there at the very least.
But I really want to talk about his faith and how the Revolution would impact his art more than anything else. How would he react to the Great Excommunication? Would there be room for his artwork in the Cultural Revolution? Would he finally be able to adopt a child like he always wanted?
(Part 2 is coming soon, I promise!)
That sounds great. You have allayed my fears and actually made me very excited for the next update. Maybe he gets his Child Protection Society? Anyway I'm hoping that the new socialist order would allow him more of a chance to break his isolation, which although I think he appreciated, must have been oppressive at time.
This is a different kind of problem - the problem in the distribution of goods, and not in the income of this comrade.
The revolutionary Marxists don't have reverential awe of parliamentarism. Any state structure is an organ of class domination. This is in the first place. Secondly, Lenin did not dissolve the State Duma - its powers were suspended by the Provisional Government until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. Thirdly, at the time of the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, there were already organs of people's administration-the Soviets. Fourthly, regarding the elections to the Constituent Assembly, they did not represent the true interests of the working people, since the Left SRs did not have time to compile separate lists (because of which Trotsky proposed to postpone the elections ... again), and the turnout was 48%. Fifth - until June 1918 the Soviet government was bipartisan - the Coalition of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Sixthly, the Bolsheviks suggested that the Mensheviks and the Right SRs create a "homogeneous socialist government," but they flatly refused. Seventh - Until the year 23, aside from the Bolsheviks, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Revolutionary Communists, Socialist-Revolutionaries-Maximalists, Anarchists, and Mensheviks-Internationalists could be elected to the Soviets. The majority of such organizations became part of the RCP (B).
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The Six Qualities Every Revolutionary Must Have (By Bookmark1995)
Bookmark1995
Banned
The Six Qualities Every Revolutionary Must Have (Excerpt from Civics For Kids (8 ed.) Metropolis, 1993)
For many people, the story of revolution is told of brave underdogs resisting a well-armed forced. The Second American Revolution and the Wars in Indochina give this. However, this is only one part of a huge job. You cannot merely take up a rifle to become a revolutionary, as any reactionary and fascist can do that.
You must be able to change society from the bottom up. But the war is not merely a physical one, but a social and mental one, the winning of hearts and minds.
To be a successful revolutionary, there are six qualities one must have.
1. Tenacity
Lenin, Debs, and other revolutionaries fought not just their governments, but a corrupt society. The majority of Russians still believed their tsar to be ordained by God, while the majority of Americans still worshiped capital more than they did God or Allah. And while the revolutions that toppled them happened in a few short years, the background for them took many more.
Lenin spent years in Siberia, and many more years in exile. Debs lost much time (and health) in prison.
A good revolutionary and his or her own followers must expect that society cannot change overnight, that they must be prepared to fight their entire lives, and that they may never live to see their changes come about.
The UASR did not become what it is today overnight, but through the hard work and determination of those who saw the words of Marx as the end, and not the means alone.
2. Courage
The word "courage" is not merely strength or bravery or fighting. It is the ability to fight for your ideals when the world tells you your wrong.
As stated, revolutionaries must fight a society that is ignorant of its own oppression and imprisonment. You must be prepared to speak to those who will not listen, or those whose will strike back to keep their ears closed. And you must be prepared to fight when called for it.
Foster was forever immortalized for his refusal to abandon his ideals-even as death stared him in the faith. Many members of the German resistance defied their families, and sought to stop the Nazi madness.
Even non-Revolutionary figures can be immortalized for their bravery. Huey Long broke with his fellow Southerners who sought to sacrifice freedom in the name of white supremacy, and sought to protect the Constitution-even at the expense of his own life.
3. Tolerance (and compromise)
It is important to understand all Revolutionaries, though united the idea of changing society, will have different ideas about how to implement it, and what to change.
Robespierre, in his zeal for change, sent his own allies to death, and thus became the greatest enemy of Revolutionary France.
Harry Truman and other heartland people disliked the First Cultural Revolution of the 1930s, many in the Deep South opposed integration, and Emma Goldman thought of the former two as "fascists in disguise", but they put aside their differences for a better nation.
Even today, the great powers of China, America, Latin America, and Rossiya will often disagree on the means to an end, but this does not make them weak or indecisive. Their ability to unite is born from ignoring petty differences.
A revolutionary must acknowledge and reconcile the differences that he may have with his or her comrades, as these divisions can consume the society you wish to build.
4. Empathy
A good revolutionary is not one who merely reads about suffering from a book (as many bourgeois progressives do from their mansions). He or she is someone who feels the suffering of the common person, and the affronts that person faces at the hands of the landlord and boss oppressor. He or she can walk around in another person's shoes.
Norman Foster and Father Gapon were those who witnessed great suffering in their societies, and sought to ameliorate what they saw.
The Papacy, though professing a belief in the common person, could not understand the cause of his suffering, merely relying on old morality in a desire to maintain ties with the capitalist powers. The fascists, devoid of empathy, shaped their conservative nations into forces of murder and destruction.
But you must not only have empathy for those who troubled by capitalism-you must have empathy for your opponent. Even many oppressors are products of their environment. Even they suffer, and you must understand that, so as to avoid making the mistakes they made.
Many children of the Nazis were forced into battle in the closing days of the Second World War. While the Nazi horde sought to murder even children as an end goal, the Reds understood that these youngsters had no control over how they were raised.
5. Mercy (and Forgiveness)
The revolutionary Mao Zedong once said that "Political Power grows out of a barrel of a gun." In his words, revolution can only be achieved through violence.
It is naive to say that Revolution can happen on words alone. From the October Revolution to today, many goals have only been achieved through violent means.
But violence and vengeance must never be your end goal, comrade. Once the war is over, when faced with someone who has fought for an oppressor or has fed from the table of capitalist oppression, you must grant him (if possible) a second chance.
The French Revolution, for example, began as a desire to end the power of kings and nobles. The guillotine itself was considered to be form of mercy, but by the end, it became the very symbol of the Revolution, as even non-political figures lost their heads.
The German people, abandoned by bourgeois leaders to inflation and poverty in the 1930s, were seduced by a vicious and depraved ideology, and could be manipulated into destroying not only Communism, but entire peoples as well.
Perhaps it would have been within the rights of the Soviets and the Americans to destroy the people, who sought to destroy them. To subject them to a Shoah, or a Hunger Plan. Same idea for the Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, and Japanese. But instead, the Revolutionaries sought to reform a people not destroy them.
There are complaints about many war criminals who were granted political positions in the German Communist state, but East Germany is a nation that not only has embraced Revolution, but its people and the Soviet people are comrades themselves. Many other formerly fascist states became fierce allies of Comintern.
Yes, there are those who depraved enough to deserve the noose, but those are the men who pushed the misguided masses into their worst instincts. A good revolutionary seeks to push the misguided toward the correct attitudes.
Perhaps abandoning vengeance is a most revolutionary act: to abandon a grudge and work toward a better future is different from millennia of vengeance.
6. Faith
All these qualities rely on this most important one: faith. You must have faith for a better world, a better tomorrow, a world without fear, a world wear all men and women are comrades.
The courageous, the tenacious, the tolerant, the empathetic, and the merciful all get their power from faith. Faith in themselves, faith in their comrades, and faith in the world.
With faith, anything becomes possible.
If you heed these six qualities, you will succeed in changing society.
For many people, the story of revolution is told of brave underdogs resisting a well-armed forced. The Second American Revolution and the Wars in Indochina give this. However, this is only one part of a huge job. You cannot merely take up a rifle to become a revolutionary, as any reactionary and fascist can do that.
You must be able to change society from the bottom up. But the war is not merely a physical one, but a social and mental one, the winning of hearts and minds.
To be a successful revolutionary, there are six qualities one must have.
1. Tenacity
Lenin, Debs, and other revolutionaries fought not just their governments, but a corrupt society. The majority of Russians still believed their tsar to be ordained by God, while the majority of Americans still worshiped capital more than they did God or Allah. And while the revolutions that toppled them happened in a few short years, the background for them took many more.
Lenin spent years in Siberia, and many more years in exile. Debs lost much time (and health) in prison.
A good revolutionary and his or her own followers must expect that society cannot change overnight, that they must be prepared to fight their entire lives, and that they may never live to see their changes come about.
The UASR did not become what it is today overnight, but through the hard work and determination of those who saw the words of Marx as the end, and not the means alone.
2. Courage
The word "courage" is not merely strength or bravery or fighting. It is the ability to fight for your ideals when the world tells you your wrong.
As stated, revolutionaries must fight a society that is ignorant of its own oppression and imprisonment. You must be prepared to speak to those who will not listen, or those whose will strike back to keep their ears closed. And you must be prepared to fight when called for it.
Foster was forever immortalized for his refusal to abandon his ideals-even as death stared him in the faith. Many members of the German resistance defied their families, and sought to stop the Nazi madness.
Even non-Revolutionary figures can be immortalized for their bravery. Huey Long broke with his fellow Southerners who sought to sacrifice freedom in the name of white supremacy, and sought to protect the Constitution-even at the expense of his own life.
3. Tolerance (and compromise)
It is important to understand all Revolutionaries, though united the idea of changing society, will have different ideas about how to implement it, and what to change.
Robespierre, in his zeal for change, sent his own allies to death, and thus became the greatest enemy of Revolutionary France.
Harry Truman and other heartland people disliked the First Cultural Revolution of the 1930s, many in the Deep South opposed integration, and Emma Goldman thought of the former two as "fascists in disguise", but they put aside their differences for a better nation.
Even today, the great powers of China, America, Latin America, and Rossiya will often disagree on the means to an end, but this does not make them weak or indecisive. Their ability to unite is born from ignoring petty differences.
A revolutionary must acknowledge and reconcile the differences that he may have with his or her comrades, as these divisions can consume the society you wish to build.
4. Empathy
A good revolutionary is not one who merely reads about suffering from a book (as many bourgeois progressives do from their mansions). He or she is someone who feels the suffering of the common person, and the affronts that person faces at the hands of the landlord and boss oppressor. He or she can walk around in another person's shoes.
Norman Foster and Father Gapon were those who witnessed great suffering in their societies, and sought to ameliorate what they saw.
The Papacy, though professing a belief in the common person, could not understand the cause of his suffering, merely relying on old morality in a desire to maintain ties with the capitalist powers. The fascists, devoid of empathy, shaped their conservative nations into forces of murder and destruction.
But you must not only have empathy for those who troubled by capitalism-you must have empathy for your opponent. Even many oppressors are products of their environment. Even they suffer, and you must understand that, so as to avoid making the mistakes they made.
Many children of the Nazis were forced into battle in the closing days of the Second World War. While the Nazi horde sought to murder even children as an end goal, the Reds understood that these youngsters had no control over how they were raised.
5. Mercy (and Forgiveness)
The revolutionary Mao Zedong once said that "Political Power grows out of a barrel of a gun." In his words, revolution can only be achieved through violence.
It is naive to say that Revolution can happen on words alone. From the October Revolution to today, many goals have only been achieved through violent means.
But violence and vengeance must never be your end goal, comrade. Once the war is over, when faced with someone who has fought for an oppressor or has fed from the table of capitalist oppression, you must grant him (if possible) a second chance.
The French Revolution, for example, began as a desire to end the power of kings and nobles. The guillotine itself was considered to be form of mercy, but by the end, it became the very symbol of the Revolution, as even non-political figures lost their heads.
The German people, abandoned by bourgeois leaders to inflation and poverty in the 1930s, were seduced by a vicious and depraved ideology, and could be manipulated into destroying not only Communism, but entire peoples as well.
Perhaps it would have been within the rights of the Soviets and the Americans to destroy the people, who sought to destroy them. To subject them to a Shoah, or a Hunger Plan. Same idea for the Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, and Japanese. But instead, the Revolutionaries sought to reform a people not destroy them.
There are complaints about many war criminals who were granted political positions in the German Communist state, but East Germany is a nation that not only has embraced Revolution, but its people and the Soviet people are comrades themselves. Many other formerly fascist states became fierce allies of Comintern.
Yes, there are those who depraved enough to deserve the noose, but those are the men who pushed the misguided masses into their worst instincts. A good revolutionary seeks to push the misguided toward the correct attitudes.
Perhaps abandoning vengeance is a most revolutionary act: to abandon a grudge and work toward a better future is different from millennia of vengeance.
6. Faith
All these qualities rely on this most important one: faith. You must have faith for a better world, a better tomorrow, a world without fear, a world wear all men and women are comrades.
The courageous, the tenacious, the tolerant, the empathetic, and the merciful all get their power from faith. Faith in themselves, faith in their comrades, and faith in the world.
With faith, anything becomes possible.
If you heed these six qualities, you will succeed in changing society.
Robespierre did nothing wrong. Maximilien Robespierre is life, Maximilien Robespierre is the Revolution.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Are you being facetious?
I wonder how the ITTL historiography views the French Revolution? Do they see Robespierre and his fellows as failed bourgeois revolutionaries? In my post, I imagined he would be an example of what not to do.
By the way, what did you think of my post? I haven't gotten much feedback on my work.
In Soviet historiography, the period of the Jacobin Dictatorship was highly appreciated. I can quote from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia -
"The historical significance of the Jacobin dictatorship lies in the fact that it brought the bourgeois revolution to a decisive victory in France and upheld its conquests from internal and external counterrevolution, laid the revolutionary traditions that played and played a big role in the revolutionary movement of the 19th and 20th centuries."
Okay, I've got some more sci-fi posts in me, but at one point I want to do some more stuff on romance comics. Would it be an idea to edit some of my old posts into a spruced up introduction to romance comics? Or should I just carry on from what I posted on the old thread?
I think its worth emphasising here that the actions of the Jacobins, good and bad, would probably be seen (in Comintern nations at least) not as a product of ideology but of their material circumstances. Consider this quote:
This was actually said by, of all people, Adam Smith. It isn't difficult to find quotes of him railing against aristocracy and indeed capitalists, so much so that I think Immanual Wallerstein suggested that it would be easy to present Adam Smith as a protosocialist to someone who didn't know better. Now Adam Smith had a skill at telling people what they want to hear, and even praised the aristocracy during wartime when they were a major part of the military, so how much of this is rhetoric or sincere is debatable. However, I suspect that the reason we don't think of Adam Smith as the British Robespierre is that things were not desperate enough in the Britain of his time to cause a revolution.
Someone once described a revolution as the people seeing where the train of history is going and pulling on the emergency stop chord: yet the very conditions that cause said revolution, even if its as clean and simple as 'being the loyal opposition to people that actively want you dead is a discredited option', tend to force revolutionaries to take on ruthless measures not because they are inherantly ruthless demagogues but because the other side wants them and the people they care about dead. Revolutions put them in a position to defend themselves whilst also meaning that they don't have the luxury of being nonviolent.
Now, all of the criticisms of the consequentialism at work here are true and valid, whether they be with regards to the means to an end steadily becoming ends unto themselves or the collateral damage done to the innocent people or the violence involved having blowback that inevitably destroys everything they hoped to build, but I suspect that even the revolutionaries that agreed with this would also feel that not being this ruthless is basically suicidal for themselves and a death sentence for those they want to help (hence why Victor Serge, writer of Year One of the Russian Revolution, both believed that it was a noble thing and basically dead as a result of the events of its early years).
In these circumstances, one could easily see Adam Smith growing into being Britain's Robespierre (and, if we're honest, Smith was easily the nicest of liberal thinkers until John Stuart Mill), and these are the circumstances in which the Jacobin's actions would be judged: even their horrifying actions being remembered as their attempts to deal with horrifying times. The degree to which their actions are seen as justified though probably depends on the precise political affiliation of the historian/scholar/individual in question (I could see their popularity waxing and waning across the 20th century depending on whether the establishment leans towards detente or open conflict with the AFS), but if nothing else I expect that modern Comintern historiography would put a higher value on the Jacobin earlier attempt to end slavery in Haiti than they would the lives of the aristocrats and capitalists that wanted to keep the Haitians in chains.
I think its worth emphasising here that the actions of the Jacobins, good and bad, would probably be seen (in Comintern nations at least) not as a product of ideology but of their material circumstances. Consider this quote:
This was actually said by, of all people, Adam Smith. It isn't difficult to find quotes of him railing against aristocracy and indeed capitalists, so much so that I think Immanual Wallerstein suggested that it would be easy to present Adam Smith as a protosocialist to someone who didn't know better. Now Adam Smith had a skill at telling people what they want to hear, and even praised the aristocracy during wartime when they were a major part of the military, so how much of this is rhetoric or sincere is debatable. However, I suspect that the reason we don't think of Adam Smith as the British Robespierre is that things were not desperate enough in the Britain of his time to cause a revolution.
Someone once described a revolution as the people seeing where the train of history is going and pulling on the emergency stop chord: yet the very conditions that cause said revolution, even if its as clean and simple as 'being the loyal opposition to people that actively want you dead is a discredited option', tend to force revolutionaries to take on ruthless measures not because they are inherantly ruthless demagogues but because the other side wants them and the people they care about dead. Revolutions put them in a position to defend themselves whilst also meaning that they don't have the luxury of being nonviolent.
Now, all of the criticisms of the consequentialism at work here are true and valid, whether they be with regards to the means to an end steadily becoming ends unto themselves or the collateral damage done to the innocent people or the violence involved having blowback that inevitably destroys everything they hoped to build, but I suspect that even the revolutionaries that agreed with this would also feel that not being this ruthless is basically suicidal for themselves and a death sentence for those they want to help (hence why Victor Serge, writer of Year One of the Russian Revolution, both believed that it was a noble thing and basically dead as a result of the events of its early years).
In these circumstances, one could easily see Adam Smith growing into being Britain's Robespierre (and, if we're honest, Smith was easily the nicest of liberal thinkers until John Stuart Mill), and these are the circumstances in which the Jacobin's actions would be judged: even their horrifying actions being remembered as their attempts to deal with horrifying times. The degree to which their actions are seen as justified though probably depends on the precise political affiliation of the historian/scholar/individual in question (I could see their popularity waxing and waning across the 20th century depending on whether the establishment leans towards detente or open conflict with the AFS), but if nothing else I expect that modern Comintern historiography would put a higher value on the Jacobin earlier attempt to end slavery in Haiti than they would the lives of the aristocrats and capitalists that wanted to keep the Haitians in chains.
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“THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
I predict Comintern historiography will be more along the lines of that Sam Clemens quote
Bookmark1995
Banned
I'm sorry, what is Twain talking about, and how does it fit in with this historiography?
He's saying the routine horrors of the aristocratic state were far worse than the exceptional horrors of the French Revolution. That no one counts those millions dead from the unjust system of monarchy and feudalism, but tallies every death at the hands of the Revolution. That the French Reign of Terror was, even with its mass executions, still less harsh than the Ancien Regime.